Virunga National Park

Virunga National Park is a national park in the Albertine Rift Valley in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was created in 1925. In elevation, it ranges from 680 m (2,230 ft) in the Semliki River valley to 5,109 m (16,762 ft) in the Rwenzori Mountains. From north to south it extends approximately 300 km (190 mi), largely along the international borders with Uganda and Rwanda in the east. It covers an area of 8,090 km² (3,120 sq mi).

Two active volcanoes, Mount Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira, are located in the park. They have significantly shaped the national park's diverse habitats and wildlife. More than 3,000 faunal and floral species have been recorded, of which more than 300 are endemic to the Albertine Rift including eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei) and golden monkey (Cercopithecus kandti). The park is also home to Tchegera Island.

In 1979, the national park was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its rich diversity of habitats, exceptional biodiversity and endemism, and its protection of rare mountain gorilla habitat. It has been listed in the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1994 because of civil unrest and increased human presence in the region.

There have been several deadly attacks in the park by rebel groups, and several park rangers have been killed.

There have been plans to drill for oil in the Congo Basin since the 2000s. Preventing these plans the park gained further protection by an agreement sealed between DRCs president Felix Tshisekedi and Boris Johnson at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. To improve the country's economic situation the government undermined that very protection by auctioning oil exploration blocks inside the park by the end of July 2022. Tullow Oil Plc, TotalEnergies, ENI and China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd (CNOOC) were interested in acquiring drilling permissions. Local and global groups, such as Greenpeace, are warning about the social and ecological impact of devastating the forest for oil production. Campaigners trying to create public awareness are threatened and intimidated on social media.

In the early 1920s, several proponents of the European conservation movement championed the idea of creating a protected area in northeastern Belgian Congo, among them Victor van Straelen, Jean Massart and Jean-Marie Derscheid. When Albert National Park was established in April 1925 as the Congo's first national park, it was conceived as a science-oriented nature reserve with the aim of studying and preserving wildlife and so-called "primitive" hunter-gatherer African Pygmies. In 1926, Derscheid headed the first Belgian mission to map Albert National Park, which encompassed an area of 500 km² (190 sq mi) around the extinct volcanoes Mount Karisimbi and Mount Mikeno. The protected area was extended in 1929 by Virunga National Park, which encompassed the Virunga Mountains, parts of the Rutshuru Territory, and the plains south of Lake Edward. Its initial size of 2,920.98 km² (1,127.80 sq mi) was enlarged step by step in subsequent years. Indigenous people lost their traditional land rights in this process, and were evicted from the protected area. Between the late 1930s and 1955, an estimated 85,000 Rwandophone people were moved to nearby Masisi in North Kivu.

In 1934, the Institut des Parcs Nationaux du Congo Belge was founded as the governing body for national parks in the Belgian Congo. Between the early 1930s and 1961, several expeditions to Albert National Park were carried out by Belgian scientists, the second headed by Gaston-François de Witte. They studied and collected zoological specimens of wildlife for the Musée Royal d'Histoire Naturelle de Belgique; explored the ethnic groups in this area; studied volcanic activity, and fossils.

In the late 1950s, Tutsi herders and their cattle entered the park, destroying natural habitat up to an altitude of 3,000 m (9,800 ft), which was thought to threaten the park's gorillas.